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The urgent problem of assimilation of tv messages has caused a reappraisal of its effects, attracting the attention of many intellectuals in different countries. The Australian philosopher Karl Popper, the American psychologist and scientist John Condry and Karol Wojtyla himself have been dealing with it during the last years in very different approaches which have eventually a common purpose: to point out the huge power of tv and the results of its bad-regulated use both in the political context and in the educational system .
According to his evolutionistic idea of education, Popper says that tv, consisting only of images, completely changes the social environment from which children take the models to imitate. As a matter of fact children are born well-structured to fit in every situation they around them, so in their mental development they depend on the environment and what we call education is something which will affect this environment in a way we judge positive. But as tv is a man-made part of it, we are responsible for its getting worse and violent, a result caused by the internal law of the audience .
In his famous article * Thief of time, unfaithful servant * Condry is persuaded of the inability for tv to teach children what they need to know in their growing up, whereas Popper thinks that it potentially might be, as it is a terrible force to evil, a tremendous force to good. It might be if we had people who could realize broadcasts of true worth. In order to do this, Popper suggests to follow a democratic system: as doctors, who have the great power of life and death upon their patients, are controlled by specific organizations, similarly everyone who takes part in tv production should be controlled and should have a licence that could withdrawn if someone acted against certain established rules. The organization should be a kind of court and its regular control would be more effective than censorship, because the licence will be allowed only after training program that ends with an exam. So producers and everyone of the field will be aware of their role in the education of the masses, while now very few of them seem to understand or be interested in the problem .
Popper ends saying that his proposal is not only urgent but necessary as well for a democracy whose purpose consists of controlling any political power. Now it's happening that tv is gaining a strong political power, like God himself who speaks. It has become too big for democracy. No democracy can survive its abuse as it has just happened in ex Jugoslavia or as it had happened in Russia before. In Germany during Hitler time there wasn't television, but his political propaganda was methodically spread with quite the same power of television. The philosopher rightly think that a new Hitler would have, with tv, an infinite power and then it would be too late .
In Italy there's a particular situation for the relationships between tv and policy. Many people who work or worked at Mediaset, the biggest private network of the country, are now politicians (among them there's, of course, the owner himself) and they play an important role on the italian political scene. There are also many political quarrels about the structure and the future of the Rai, the public network, especially about its privatization. This floating situation has dangerous effects for the stability of the government and there isn't yet a consistent debate on the tv regulation, while the mondial media net goes on with exporting also in the smallest villages of the world films and commercials which increase the immigration as well. Although in the rich western countries commercials are felt like a simple sign system without real references, in the Second and Third World they are thought to be a trustworhty description of reality, affecting the expectations of immigration .
Perhaps now, in the country, we are facing the consequences of the italian broadcast sent out in Albania before the fall of the regime!
It's curious, however, that a liberal philosopher and the Head of Church have essentially the same ideas of the countermeasures to adopt towards tv social issue. Both have spoken about the fall of communism in the eastern Europe as a result of the spread of western Europe tv there, but while Popper thought that this historical change involved for the democracies the final solution to the violence problem, Wojtyla thinks that this change has caused the democracies to analyse the vices the communism was born as a remedy for. Nevertheless, the two ideologies are rather basically distant: the first liberal and striclty secular, doesn't want the religious authorities to have moral duties in the society; the second is completely absorbed by the salvifical message of Catholicism and ready to condemn the unfair policies but also the * fight against God * or rather every ideology and opposed philosophy .
The hope in an over-all communication which could combine easiness and universality of relationships with the human ability of thinking would die if we trusted in the tv. The * global village * would be condemned to turn to an idiot. The Pope himself who seems to be more sensible than many other politicians, trusts the digital and multimedial dimension of Internet, the electronic motorway. According to the Pope, the urgency of the evangelization can be expressed by the new technologies especially now that we are so near to the first Jubilee of the telematic Era. At the beginning of the second millenium the Church spread abroad the Gospel and civilized people and the monasteries were the main means for the cultural flow .
Nowadays, near to the third millennium , the Christian community faithful and humanly expert has to accept and braverly face the new telematic challenge giving life to a new * areopago *.
